MouseTracker

MouseTracker is a free, user-friendly software package that allows researchers to record and analyze real-time hand movements en route to responses on the screen (via the coordinates of an MR-safe mouse, trackball, or sensor). By looking at how the hand settles into a response alternative--and how it may be partially pulled toward other alternatives--researchers glean information about real-time mental processing. It's like opening up a single reaction time into a continuous stream of rich cognitive output. Experiments can incorporate images, letter strings, and sounds. Once recorded, participants' mouse trajectories can be visualized, averaged, and explored, and measures of curvature, complexity, velocity, acceleration, and angle can be computed. Precise characterizations of mouse trajectories' temporal and spatial dynamics are available, and these can shed light on a variety of important empirical questions across psychology, neuroscience, and beyond.